Western states' transportation spending reveals their priorities

With President Obama authorizing $105 billion for transportation spending this July, you might wonder: Just how does that federal dough get spent? Turns out about 80 percent is funneled into highways. Given the West's size and far-apart cities, you might also expect this road-centricity to be more pronounced here, with spending on public transit and pedestrian and bicycling infrastructure below the national average. That's not the case, but the differences in the spending of state and federal transport dollars between Western states do say quite a bit about their priorities.

21: Average percent of transportation budget that Western states spend on transit projects; the national average is 20 percent.